Winning Without Fighting

113 Pages·2008·0.96 MB·English

Winning Without Fighting:
The Art of Nonviolent Action

Master paper May 2008
Institute for Comparative Politics, University of Bergen

Petter Grahl Johnstad
Thank you

For financial support: Fritt Ord / Norsk senter for menneskerettigheter, L.
Meltzers Høyskolefond, Benjamin Johannessens familielegat, Universitet i
Bergens legater, Astrid Berstads legat and Johan Christopher Rogges legat.
Those who have provided support for field trips can rest assured that the
proposed work will take place; as this paper is however already pushing
against spatial constraints, the field work will be conducted as part of an
extension of this project during the fall of 2008.

For academic quality control and input: my advisor Torstein Hjellum and the
Comparative Democratization research group at the University of Bergen.

For support on many levels: my family. And finally, for facilitating the
transformation that got this project off the launch pad: Ajay Pal Singh, Jaya
Ashmore and Gemma Polo Pujol.
Contents

1 - Introduction............................................................................................................................3
1.1 Terminology....................................................................................................................5
1.2 Program............................................................................................................................5
2 - Theory......................................................................................................................................6
2.1 Nonviolence.........................................................................................................................6
2.1.1 Nonviolent action..........................................................................................................7
2.2 Nonviolent dynamics...........................................................................................................8
2.2.1 Social movement theory...............................................................................................9
2.2.2 Nonviolent action literature........................................................................................11
2.2.3 Democratization literature..........................................................................................13
2.2.4 The psychology of authoritarianism...........................................................................15
2.2.5 The theory of Winning Without Fighting...................................................................17
2.3 Political legitimacy............................................................................................................22
2.3.1 Delineation..................................................................................................................22
2.3.2 Political mythology.....................................................................................................23
2.3.3 Institutionalization of myths.......................................................................................24
2.3.4 Performance................................................................................................................24
2.3.5 Elite legitimacy...........................................................................................................25
2.3.6 Popular legitimacy......................................................................................................25
2.3.7 External legitimacy.....................................................................................................26
3 - Methodology..........................................................................................................................27
3.1 Case selection....................................................................................................................28
3.2 Comparative case study.....................................................................................................29
3.3 Boolean or qualitative case analysis..................................................................................30
3.3.1 Constructing the data set.............................................................................................31
3.3.2 Regime legitimacy index............................................................................................32
3.4 Statistical analysis..............................................................................................................35
Table 2: Overview of regime legitimacy.................................................................................37
Table 3: Overview of cases......................................................................................................38
4 - Case presentations................................................................................................................39
4.1 Preamble: the evolving legitimacy of racism and political regimes..................................39
4.2 India: independence movement 1919-1947.......................................................................41
4.2.1 Agency........................................................................................................................43
4.2.2 Analytical summary....................................................................................................46
4.3 USA: civil rights movement 1955-1963............................................................................47
4.3.1 Agency........................................................................................................................47
4.3.2 Analytical summary....................................................................................................51
4.4 Poland: Solidarity 1980-1989............................................................................................51
4.4.1 Agency........................................................................................................................52
4.4.2 Analytical summary....................................................................................................55
4.5 China: student movement 1989.........................................................................................55
4.5.1 Agency........................................................................................................................57
4.5.2 Analytical summary....................................................................................................59
4.6 Russia 1905........................................................................................................................59
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4.7 Nazi Germany 1943...........................................................................................................61
4.8 El Salvador 1944................................................................................................................63
4.9 Guatemala 1944.................................................................................................................64
4.10 South Africa 1948-1994..................................................................................................66
4.11 Chile 1983-1988..............................................................................................................70
4.12 The Philippines 1986.......................................................................................................72
4.13 Israel-Palestine 1987-1990..............................................................................................73
4.14 Burma/Myanmar 1988-1989...........................................................................................75
4.15 Serbia 1999-2000.............................................................................................................77
4.16 Georgia 2003...................................................................................................................78
5 - Results....................................................................................................................................80
5.1 Comparative case study.....................................................................................................80
5.2 Qualitative case analysis....................................................................................................83
5.3 Statistical analysis..............................................................................................................84
5.4 Summary of analyses.........................................................................................................86
6 - Discussion..............................................................................................................................88
6.1 Implications for protest organizers....................................................................................88
6.1.1 Burma/Myanmar.........................................................................................................92
6.1.2 Israel-Palestine............................................................................................................94
6.2 Further research.................................................................................................................98
Appendix 1: Significance tests for QCA models.......................................................................101
Literature....................................................................................................................................104

Abstract

Nonviolent collective action emerged during the last century as a potent tool for democratization
and the pursuit of freedom and human rights. Yet the phenomenon remains somewhat
understudied, and our understanding of its dynamics far from complete. The paper attempts to
address the lack of understanding by identifying causal factors that can explain the success or
failure of nonviolent protest. It approaches this question through a combination of three
comparative methodologies – in-depth qualitative case studies, Boolean comparison (Qualitative
Case Analysis) and statistical analysis – examining a total of 29 cases of nonviolent action
throughout the 20th century (with a brief foray into the 21st). The data set is constructed from
extant case studies and other secondary sources. The study investigates the causal impact of
regime legitimacy, regime and protest group violence, mass media freedom, and religious
authority on protest outcome and identifies legitimacy and protest violence as particularly
decisive. A discussion of the implications of these findings for protest organizers is offered, and
predictions on their basis are made for the outcome of recent protests in Burma/Myanmar and a
hypothetical Palestinian protest movement against the West Bank Wall.

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1 - Introduction
Violence is nature’s way of sorting out conflicts. The strong survive by preying on the weak,
and where there is a disagreement an aptitude for mortal combat generally holds the day. Our
human species has spent most of its evolutionary history living much like other species – in a
constant fight for survival – and it should come as little surprise that we have for the most part
retained nature’s way of solving disputes until this day. Human history is a history of violence,
and the century we recently left behind was maybe the most violent of them all.

Yet as the 20th century lumbered on through its world wars and genocidal excesses, a counter-
trend of nonviolent action was slowly establishing itself. Although by no means a new
invention, it did during this century come into its own as a potent tool of political agency. Its
founding moment was the Gandhi-led overthrow of the British rule in India, inspiring in turn the
American civil rights movement, the South African fight against apartheid, and, during the past
three decades, a growing number of transitions to democracy. Poland, the Philippines, Chile,
Serbia and Georgia are all examples of countries that embarked on a democratization process
largely via nonviolent mass action.

Nonviolent action is essentially an attempt to change the rules of the power game. Its aim is to
deny those with the means of violent repression the use of such means, turning the principle that
‘might makes right’ on its head. Where violent insurgency seeks to destroy the opponent’s
physical capability to act, nonviolence leaves the apparatus of repression intact but seeks to
render its use impossible. When successfully applied, the opponent will retain his police and
military forces, but will not dare to use them – fearing mutiny among his troops, or a backlash
from civil society or other pillars of support for the regime.

The fundamental insight behind the strategy of nonviolent action is that the maintenance of
power on a political level requires legitimacy (Sharp 1973). An authoritarian ruler – to take a
common opponent for nonviolent struggle – is dependent upon a degree of international
recognition, the implicit acceptance of his rule among the general populace, loyalty from his
apparatus of repression, and finally an ability to justify his rule in his own eyes. Not all
necessarily depend on all of these, but none can maintain power over time simply on the basis of
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raw force. The aim of the resistance movement is to deprive the dictator of those sources of
legitimacy most vital to the continuation of his rule.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate and seek an understanding of the outcome of
nonviolent resistance. Why did the events at Tiananmen Square in 1989 lead to a massacre,
while German women protesting in 1943 Berlin on behalf of their Jewish husbands succeeded in
imposing their will on the Nazi regime? The findings of this study suggest the following:

1. Nonviolent struggle will tend to succeed when it skillfully exploits weak points in its
opponent’s claim to legitimacy of power.
2. A nonviolent campaign turning to violence will avail its opponent to a legitimate excuse
for violent repression and result in an overall loss of strength for the resistance
movement.
3. Unjustified violent repression from the regime or opponent will tend to strengthen the
campaign of nonviolent resistance insofar as the latter started with a strong claim to
legitimacy vis-à-vis its opponent.
4. The presence of a free mass media or of well-established underground media networks
will serve both as an organizational tool and as a disseminator of news regarding regime-
sanctioned atrocities and thus facilitate protest success.
5. A movement possessing a degree of religious authority will find it easier to mobilize
popular support and to bridge social divides between its supporters, and may thus be able
to present a strong united front to its opponent.

The title of this paper is a quote from Sun Tzu’s Art of War, a 2000-year old Chinese book of
military strategy that extols “those who render others’ armies helpless without fighting” (Sun
Tzu and Cleary 1988:67). Rather than overcoming his enemies on the battlefield, the superior
general infiltrates their ranks, uncovers their secrets, fosters discontent and disharmony and
destroys their alliances, thus eroding their willingness to fight. In a context of this paper, of
course, ‘winning without fighting’ also refers to overcoming the opponent by the use of
nonviolent methods. The aim of the paper is to combine nonviolence with Sun Tzu’s devious
means, and thus to suggest ways in which one can indeed be both ‘harmless as doves and wise
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as serpents’. With a clear understanding of the opponent’s needs and motivations – what drives
him, what excuses he makes for himself, what kind of support he needs from society and the
world – a strategy may be developed for the purpose of trimming down his range of responses,
rendering his police forces and armies effectively helpless.
1.1 Terminology
In this paper it will be assumed that nonviolent resistance is a form of political action aimed at
changing policy of state actors. The forms of protest here discussed do in other words all belong
to the realm of the political, and the protest objective is frequently to change the political regime
itself. Many instances of nonviolent action, notably labor strikes, which relate primarily to
economic rather than political issues, are thus not covered by this discussion.

The protesters will be referred to interchangeably as the resistors, the opposition, the movement
or the protest group. Names for their opponents are the authorities, the regime, the government
and the state. The act of protest itself may be known as a campaign, a demonstration or a
nonviolent offensive.
1.2 Program
The program for this paper is as follows. Chapter 2 outlines a number of relevant insights from
different strands of research literature, and uses this as the basis for the formulation and
elucidation of the hypotheses that are to be tested. Chapter 3 thereupon describes the three
methodologies that will be employed in testing these hypotheses. Chapter 4 presents the data, in
the form of four in-depth case studies for the qualitative comparison and 11 brief summaries
justifying the coding of the data set to be utilized with Boolean and statistical methods. (These
15 national movements translate into 29 cases for the Boolean and statistical analyses.) Chapter
5 provides their respective findings, and Chapter 6 discusses the general implications of these
findings and estimates the potential for nonviolent protest in present-day Burma/Myanmar and
Israel-Palestine. It finally discusses how further research can improve upon the present study.

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2 - Theory
2.1 Nonviolence
In essence we may speak of two main schools of nonviolence: the pacifist and the pragmatic.
For the former, nonviolence is a principle of life and also a great definitional challenge, and
those of the pacifist persuasion has spilled much ink attempting to demarcate the precise border
between violence and nonviolence. Galtung’s (1965) discussion of various types of nonviolence
does for instance include at its extreme end the happily termed ‘vacuous’ nonviolence, which
deems even the attempt to change a person’s mind as violence. Readers of Gandhi’s (2001
[1929]; 2001 [1951]) work may also observe how he sought to align his campaigns of social
disobedience with his philosophy of nonviolence, ever alert for the sort of tactics that would
infringe upon his principles.

From the more pragmatic perspective, however, nonviolence is simply that which does not seek
to cause any bodily harm. Pragmatic activists use nonviolence not because of any fundamentally
pacifist persuasion but on the basis of its potency as a political weapon. This is a more
contemporary view of nonviolence, championed most famously by Sharp (1973; 2005), and
according to Johansen (2007:145) it is today more prevalent than pacifism.

Pragmatic nonviolent action nevertheless builds on the work of theorists with undeniably
positivist views regarding its application. Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King count
among the latter, who base their philosophies of nonviolence on spiritual ideas such as the
Hindu and Buddhist ahimsa, the Christian ‘turning of the other cheek’, and, as Abu-Nimer
(2000-2001) has amply demonstrated, Islamic precepts like social justice and the equality of
mankind. Gandhi’s fundamental philosophy was, in the words of Flinders (1997:156), to
“transform the opponent, drawing him in as a participant and beneficiary in the solution.” To
this point of view, nonviolent resistance works most importantly by making its opponent realize
the errors of his ways and helping him overcome old tendencies of hatred and violence. While
commendable, this approach to conflict resolution is probably not very common, and will
undoubtedly sound very naïve and ineffectual to many people – particularly those who are
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currently engaged in bitter and protracted conflict with entrenched opponents. Furthermore, one
can always question motives and argue over who was ‘really’ of a nonviolent persuasion and
who merely used nonviolence as a means to an end. For these reasons, it will not be required
that you ‘love thine enemy’ to be counted as nonviolent in the context of this study, only that
you employ nonviolent methods. This paper will thus regard nonviolent resistance as something
like a residual category, encompassing any form of macro level collective political action that
does not employ violent sanctions. Few cases of political struggle are purely nonviolent,
moreover, and methods both violent and nonviolent are often forced to coexist. This tends to
weaken the impact of the nonviolent struggle, but does not exclude a case from analysis unless
the violence reaches such proportions so as to constitute the main form of resistance.
2.1.1 Nonviolent action
With a pragmatic view of nonviolence, nonviolent action is undertaken simply for the reason
that it may in some contexts “be more effective than violent action in promoting social and
political change” (Schock 2005:37). At the most general level, the term nonviolent action may
thus encompass any and all political agency that refrains from violent attacks on groups and
individuals. It is however common to exclude more institutionalized forms of politics such as
election campaigns or referenda in established democracies from the term, and to emphasize
collective rather than individual actors (Schock 2003).

According to Sharp (2005:39), nonviolent action is fundamentally “a technique of action by
which the population can restrict and sever the sources of power of their rulers or other
oppressors and mobilize their own power potential into effective power.” This technique is
delineated into three broad classes of methods: 1) protest and persuasion; 2) noncooperation;
and 3) nonviolent intervention. The first aims essentially at communication and awareness-
raising, making the regime and the populace aware not only of the existence of an alternative
point of view but also the extent to which it is held. Demonstrations, rallies and mass meetings
are the classic means of such communication, but it would also include mass campaigns via
print, broadcast or electronic media.

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Methods of noncooperation involve the withdrawal of cooperation or participation in selected
areas of political, economic or social life with the intention to disrupt its daily continuation.
Labor strikes and consumer boycotts seek to disconcert capital interests and thus perhaps cause
a split between political and economic elites; social ostracism of regime collaborators seeks to
upset social life and force people to reconsider their priorities; and civil disobedience aims at the
direct interruption of political life. Sharp (ibid:55-61) counts a total of more than one hundred
specific methods of noncooperation.

Finally, the methods of intervention take a step further, seeking to disrupt normal operations not
by withdrawal of participation but by active interposition. This is a rather more confrontational
form of political agency, accomplishing its task either by blocking the operations of existing
institutions via sit-ins, land occupation and perhaps sabotage, or by developing parallel
institutions like street courts and local governments.
2.2 Nonviolent dynamics
Having established what nonviolent action is, I now turn to the rather more complex question of
how it works. The starting point is that campaigns of nonviolent political action achieve their
aims through a transformation of the dynamics of power. Unlike violent insurgency, it does not
attempt to challenge the “monopoly of violence” inherent to the state apparatus (Rokkan 1987),
but rather to enforce a change of the battlefield. When successfully applied, it will force the
regime to meet its challenge in a battle where the decisive factor is not military power but
legitimacy, and where the application of violent repression is often useless and sometimes worse
than useless.1

Sharp (2005:415-421) describes four basic routes to victory for nonviolent activists: conversion,
accommodation, nonviolent coercion and disintegration. Conversion works, in true Gandhian
fashion, by bringing the opponent to change his mind so as to agree with his challengers. Having
been confronted with the overwhelming moral force of the protesters he loses his self-legitimacy

1 This change of battlefield, of course, is generally not in the interest of the regime, which tends to hold a strong
hand in any contest involving military force. Thus it must be expected that any opponent challenged by nonviolent
action will attempt to negate this introduction of a new battlefield. “Because of the special difficulties of repressing
a nonviolent resistance movement,” says Sharp (1973:586), “the opponent may seek to ease them by attributing
violence to the nonviolent actionists.”
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